## Why
The Codex App has animated pets, but the TUI had no equivalent ambient
companion surface. This brings that experience into terminal Codex while
keeping the main chat flow usable: the pet should feel present, but it
cannot cover transcript text, composer input, approvals, or picker
content.
The feature also needs to be terminal-aware. Different terminals support
different image protocols, tmux can interfere with image rendering, and
some users will want pets disabled entirely or anchored differently
depending on their layout.
<table>
<tr><td>
<img width="4110" height="2584" alt="CleanShot 2026-05-05 at 12 41
45@2x"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/68a1fcbc-2104-48d6-b834-69c6aaa95cdf"
/>
<p align="center">macOS - Ghostty, iTerm2 and WezTerm with Custom
Pet</p>
</td></tr>
<tr><td>
![Uploading CleanShot 2026-05-10 at 20.28.30.png…]()
<p align="center">Windows Terminal</p>
</td></tr>
<tr><td>
<img width="3902" height="2752" alt="CleanShot 2026-05-05 at 12 39
02@2x"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/300e2931-6b00-467e-91cb-ab8e28470500"
/>
<p align="center">Linux - WezTerm and Ghostty</p>
</td></tr>
</table>
## What Changed
- Add a TUI ambient pet renderer in `codex-rs/tui/src/pets/`.
- Port the app-style pet animation states so the sprite changes with
task status, waiting-for-input states, review/ready states, and
failures.
- Add `/pets` selection UI with a preview pane, loading state, built-in
pet choices, and a first-row `Disable terminal pets` option.
- Download built-in pet spritesheets on demand from the same public CDN
path already used by Android, under
`https://persistent.oaistatic.com/codex/pets/v1/...`, and cache them
locally under `~/.codex/cache/tui-pets/`.
- Keep custom pets local.
- Add config support for pet selection, disabling pets, and choosing
whether the pet follows the composer bottom or anchors to the terminal
bottom.
- Reserve layout space around the pet so transcript wrapping, live
responses, and composer input do not render underneath the sprite.
- Gate image rendering by terminal capability, disable image pets under
tmux, and support both Kitty Graphics and SIXEL terminals.
- Add redraw cleanup for terminal image artifacts, including sixel cell
clearing.
## Current Scope
- This is an initial TUI version of ambient pets, not full App parity.
- It focuses on ambient sprite rendering, `/pets` selection, custom
pets, terminal capability gating, and on-demand CDN-backed built-in
assets.
- The ambient text overlay is currently disabled, so the TUI renders the
pet sprite without extra status text beside it.
## How to Test
1. Start Codex TUI in a terminal with image support.
2. Run `/pets`.
3. Confirm the picker shows built-in pets plus custom pets, and the
first item is `Disable terminal pets`.
4. On a fresh `~/.codex/cache/tui-pets/`, move onto a built-in pet and
confirm the first preview downloads the spritesheet from the shared
Codex pets CDN and renders successfully.
5. Move through the pet list and confirm subsequent built-in previews
use the local cache.
6. Select a pet, then send and receive messages. Confirm transcript and
composer text wrap before the pet instead of rendering underneath the
sprite.
7. Change the pet anchor setting and confirm the pet can either follow
the composer bottom or sit at the terminal bottom.
8. Return to `/pets`, choose `Disable terminal pets`, and confirm the
sprite disappears cleanly.
Targeted tests:
- `cargo test -p codex-tui ambient_pet_`
- `cargo test -p codex-tui
resize_reflow_wraps_transcript_early_when_pet_is_enabled`
- `cargo insta pending-snapshots`
## Summary
`ChatWidget` has been carrying several independent domains in one large
state bag: transcript bookkeeping, turn lifecycle, queued input, status
surfaces, connectors, review mode, and protocol dispatch. That makes
otherwise-local changes hard to reason about because unrelated fields
and side effects live beside each other in `chatwidget.rs`.
This is the first cleanup PR in a larger decomposition effort. It does
not try to make `chatwidget.rs` small in one sweep; instead, it
establishes focused state boundaries that later handler, popup,
rendering, and effect-synchronization extractions can build on.
This PR keeps `ChatWidget` as the composition layer while moving focused
state into smaller `codex-tui` modules. The widget still owns effects
that touch the bottom pane, app events, command submission, redraw
scheduling, and terminal-title updates.
## Changes
- Add focused state modules under `codex-rs/tui/src/chatwidget/` for
input queues, turn lifecycle, transcript bookkeeping, status state,
connectors, review mode, and app-server protocol dispatch.
- Update `ChatWidget` to hold grouped state structs and route
input/lifecycle/status operations through those focused helpers.
- Move app-server notification dispatch into `chatwidget/protocol.rs`
while leaving feature handlers and side effects on `ChatWidget`.
- Replace the large manual `ChatWidget` test literal with the normal
constructor plus narrow test overrides, so future state moves do not
require every field to be restated in test setup.
- Update existing tests to access the new grouped state or narrower
helpers without changing snapshot behavior.
## Longer-term direction
Follow-up PRs can continue shrinking `chatwidget.rs` by moving behavior,
not just state, into focused modules:
- Extract input/submission flow, turn/stream handling, and tool-cell
lifecycles into domain modules that call the new state reducers.
- Move popup/settings builders and rendering helpers out of the main
widget file so `ChatWidget` stays focused on composition.
- Reduce direct `BottomPane` mutation by applying domain-specific sync
outputs at clearer boundaries.
## Why
We want terminal tool review analytics, but the reducer should not stamp
review timing from its own wall clock.
This PR plumbs review timing through the real protocol and app-server
seams so downstream analytics can consume the emitter's timestamps
directly. Guardian reviews keep their enriched `started_at` /
`completed_at` analytics fields by deriving those legacy second-based
values from the same protocol-native millisecond lifecycle timestamps,
rather than sampling a separate analytics clock.
## What changed
- add `started_at_ms` to user approval request payloads
- add `started_at_ms` / `completed_at_ms` to guardian review
notifications
- preserve Guardian review `started_at` / `completed_at` enrichment from
the protocol-native timing source
- stamp typed `ServerResponse` analytics facts with app-server-observed
`completed_at_ms`
- thread the new timing fields through core, protocol, app-server, TUI,
and analytics fixtures
## Verification
- `cargo test -p codex-app-server outgoing_message --manifest-path
codex-rs/Cargo.toml`
- `cargo test -p codex-app-server-protocol guardian --manifest-path
codex-rs/Cargo.toml`
- `cargo test -p codex-tui guardian --manifest-path codex-rs/Cargo.toml`
- `cargo test -p codex-analytics analytics_client_tests --manifest-path
codex-rs/Cargo.toml`
---
[//]: # (BEGIN SAPLING FOOTER)
Stack created with [Sapling](https://sapling-scm.com). Best reviewed
with [ReviewStack](https://reviewstack.dev/openai/codex/pull/21434).
* #18748
* __->__ #21434
* #18747
* #17090
* #17089
* #20514
## Why
With the local model layer and app-server routing in place from PR1,
this PR moves the active TUI runtime onto app-server notifications. The
affected pieces share the same event flow, so the command surface,
session state, bottom-pane prompts, chat rendering, history/status
views, and tests move together to keep the stacked branch buildable.
This PR also removes the obsolete compatibility surface that is no
longer used after the migration. The proposed protocol-boundary verifier
layer was dropped from the stack; enforcing that final boundary will be
simpler once `codex-tui` no longer needs any `codex_protocol`
references.
This PR is part 2 of a 2-PR stack:
1. Add TUI-owned replacement models and extract app-server event
routing.
2. Move the active TUI flow to app-server notifications and delete
obsolete adapter code.
## What changed
- Rewired app command and session handling to use app-server request and
notification shapes.
- Moved approval overlays, request-user-input flows, MCP elicitation,
realtime events, and review commands onto the app-server-facing model
surface.
- Updated chat rendering, history cells, status views, multi-agent UI,
replay state, and TUI tests to use app-server notifications plus the
local models introduced in PR1.
- Deleted `codex-rs/tui/src/app/app_server_adapter.rs` and the
superseded `chatwidget/tests/background_events.rs` fixture path.
## Verification
- `cargo check -p codex-tui --tests`
- Top of stack: `cargo test -p codex-tui`
## Why
This is part 3 of a 7-PR stack to remove direct
`codex_protocol::protocol` usage from `codex-tui` while keeping each
layer reviewable and shippable.
With `AppCommand` now explicit, the internal app event bus can carry TUI
commands directly instead of bouncing through core `Op` values.
## What changed
- Changed `AppEvent::CodexOp` and `AppEvent::SubmitThreadOp` to carry
`AppCommand`.
- Updated app-event senders and direct emitters to submit `AppCommand`
values.
- Adjusted tests to match `AppCommand` or convert back through
`into_core()` where they intentionally assert legacy payload equality.
## Verification
- `cargo test -p codex-tui --no-run`
## Why
Auto-review can deny an action that the user later decides they want to
retry. Today there is no TUI surface for selecting a recent denial and
sending explicit approval context back into the session, so users have
to restate intent manually and the retry can be reviewed without the
original denied action context.
This adds a narrow TUI-driven path for approving a recent denied action
while still keeping the retry inside the normal auto-review flow.
## What Changed
- Added `/auto-review-denials` to open a picker of recent denied
auto-review actions.
- Added a small in-memory TUI store for the 10 most recent denied
auto-review events.
- Selecting a denial sends the structured denied event back through the
existing core/app-server op path.
- Core now injects a developer message containing the approved action
JSON rather than the full assessment event.
- Auto-review transcript collection now preserves this specific approval
developer message so follow-up review sessions can see the user approval
context.
- Added TUI snapshot/unit coverage for the picker and approval dispatch
path.
- Added core coverage for retaining the approval developer message in
the auto-review transcript.
## Verification
- `cargo test -p codex-core
collect_guardian_transcript_entries_keeps_manual_approval_developer_message`
- `cargo test -p codex-tui auto_review_denials`
- `cargo test -p codex-tui
approving_recent_denial_emits_structured_core_op_once`
## Notes
This intentionally keeps retries going through auto-review. The approval
signal is context for the exact previously denied action, not a blanket
bypass for similar future actions.
## Summary
Short circuit the convo if auto-review hits too many denials
## Testing
- [x] Added unit tests
---------
Co-authored-by: Codex <noreply@openai.com>
## Summary
When auto-review is enabled, it should handle request_permissions tool.
We'll need to clean up the UX but I'm planning to do that in a separate
pass
## Testing
- [x] Ran locally
<img width="893" height="396" alt="Screenshot 2026-04-17 at 1 16 13 PM"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4c045c5f-1138-4c6c-ac6e-2cb6be4514d8"
/>
---------
Co-authored-by: Codex <noreply@openai.com>
This PR teaches the TUI to render guardian review timeouts as explicit
terminal history entries instead of dropping them from the live
timeline.
It adds timeout-specific history cells for command, patch, MCP tool, and
network approval reviews.
It also adds snapshot tests covering both the direct guardian event path
and the app-server notification path.
## Description
This PR introduces `review_id` as the stable identifier for guardian
reviews and exposes it in app-server `item/autoApprovalReview/started`
and `item/autoApprovalReview/completed` events.
Internally, guardian rejection state is now keyed by `review_id` instead
of the reviewed tool item ID. `target_item_id` is still included when a
review maps to a concrete thread item, but it is no longer overloaded as
the review lifecycle identifier.
## Motivation
We'd like to give users the ability to preempt a guardian review while
it's running (approve or decline).
However, we can't implement the API that allows the user to override a
running guardian review because we didn't have a unique `review_id` per
guardian review. Using `target_item_id` is not correct since:
- with execve reviews, there can be multiple execve calls (and therefore
guardian reviews) per shell command
- with network policy reviews, there is no target item ID
The PR that actually implements user overrides will use `review_id` as
the stable identifier.
## Description
Previously the `action` field on `EventMsg::GuardianAssessment`, which
describes what Guardian is reviewing, was typed as an arbitrary JSON
blob. This PR cleans it up and defines a sum type representing all the
various actions that Guardian can review.
This is a breaking change (on purpose), which is fine because:
- the Codex app / VSCE does not actually use `action` at the moment
- the TUI code that consumes `action` is updated in this PR as well
- rollout files that serialized old `EventMsg::GuardianAssessment` will
just silently drop these guardian events
- the contract is defined as unstable, so other clients have a fair
warning :)
This will make things much easier for followup Guardian work.
## Why
The old guardian review payloads worked, but they pushed too much shape
knowledge into downstream consumers. The TUI had custom JSON parsing
logic for commands, patches, network requests, and MCP calls, and the
app-server protocol was effectively just passing through an opaque blob.
Typing this at the protocol boundary makes the contract clearer.
Felipe Coury